"It will rain, I think," he said, looking op at the sky.
"The air is very heavy," said I.
He stretched out the candlestick to the full length of his arm, and the flame barely wavered.
"Yes, no doubt it will rain," he repeated.
I noticed that one or two people who were passing up the street stopped, as well they might, and stared at us. I bent forward and blew out the candle.
"You will pardon me," I said.
"It has served its purpose," said he, and he kicked the door to behind me.
I mounted, and walked my horse slowly homewards. About two miles from the town I dismounted, and tethering my horse to a tree, paced about the lake shores, resolved to unpick his sentences word by word until I had disentangled from amongst them some reference which would give me an inkling into the steward's designs. He had told Herbert of that talk we had had together in the hall concerning the hanging of the picture. Of so much I was assured, and so much I still found myself abstractedly repeating an hour later. For alas! in spite of my resolve, my thoughts had flown along a very different path. I had a vision of the woman, and her alternations from pride to tears, ever fixed before my eyes. It was myself who had caused them. One moment I accused myself for not undertaking her defence, the next for that I had ever entered her lodging; and whatever outcry I made sprang from the single conviction that I was responsible to her for the distress which she had shown. Just for that moment there seemed but two people upon God's earth—myself and a woman wronged by me.
"Mr. Clavering."
The name was uttered behind me with an involuntary cry, and I knew the voice. I turned me about, and there was Mrs. Herbert standing in a gap of the trees.